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gregladen | February 22, 2011Steven Newton, Programs and Policy Director for the National Center for Science Education:
... Why is "neutrality" toward evolution such a disaster for college-bound kids?
Evolution is the foundation of biology. Just as geologists cannot decipher the earth's features without plate tectonics, and physicists cannot understand the interaction of light and matter without quantum electrodynamics, biologists cannot explain the diversity of life on earth without evolution. Trying to teach biology without evolution is like teaching auto mechanics without discussing engines. Teachers should not be…
gregladen | February 22, 2011The Biggest Loser is a TV reality show on which people who really do weigh a lot more than is healthy compete to lose weight. They do this on teams. There are various challenges. There are charismatic trainers. And, of course, because it is a TV reality show, individuals can get tossed off the show either because of poor performance (not losing enough weight) or by getting voted off.
An interesting and entirely inappropriate trend has developed on this show.
Individuals decide that they should leave the show while others must stay. They accomplish this by gaining, rather than losing,…
gregladen | February 22, 2011And other matters, including a summary of what happened in Texas.
The Tennessee Senate has introduced a second anti- evolution bill and the debate over teaching intelligent design in schools continues. Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education updates us on the debate.
Click here.
More on Tennessee here, regarding the seventh anti-Evolution bill filed somewhere in the US this year, the second in Tennessee. Yes folks, we are under attack more than ever.
gregladen | February 22, 2011Two Decades of Christian Nationalist Education Paved Way for Today's War on Labor
While some religious leaders have come together to voice support for public employees in Wisconsin, others view the attack on the public sector and unions as a holy war. Fundamentalist textbooks and other media have been used for indoctrination into a worldview in which unregulated free markets are divinely mandated. In this sacralized model of capitalism, those who interfere with the invisible hand of the market are choosing "the state as provider rather than God." The Koch brothers may have helped finance…
gregladen | February 22, 2011
The First Openly Gay Horse to run in a major race will be at the post today:
Teachers Must Die:
You can make an Angry Birds birthday cake:
gregladen | February 22, 2011Or do people just say that this happens with insufficient evidence? In one study it was shown that local governments were using inadequate data to "justify marginalizing sex-related businesses..." a position they felt worthy of supporting even if it could be supported only by twisting the evidence.
Have a look at Sex, Science, and Social Policy.
gregladen | February 22, 2011A 6.3 earthquake has just struck the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, killing dozens and leaving dozens more buried in rubble with rescue workers trying to dig them out. On the TV this morning, the mayor of Christchurch told his story: Having just left a series of meetings, he was sitting on a balcony outside the city offices in a tall building with his executive assistant planning their next activities when the quake struck. They tried to re-enter the building but were repeatedly thrown back away from the entrance way. When the powerful earthquake stopped, he picked himself up off the…
j7uy5 | February 21, 2011Ok, here's an idea. The Dervaes family have decide to make the phrase "urban homestead" a registered trademark (1 2 3 4 5; also see the EFF post). Presumably, they are doing this to make money. They have gone so far as to send DMCA takedown notices to other persons...persons who, presumably, thought they all were colleagues of some sort. I guess not.
So, if it is possible to make money off of something that is rather commonplace (About 179,000 results on Google) on the Internet, I've got an idea that is even better. I am going to trademark Insufferable Arrogance®. Not the phrase, mind…
gregladen | February 21, 2011Is your car stuck in the snow? There are two ways to get it out. The wrong way and the right way. Here's the wrong way:
Ignore the snarky comment at the beginning of the video. According to sources with the SPFD and the News, this car caught on fire for the same reason about two or three dozen other cars caught fire over the last several weeks in the Twin Cities. The driver was under the impression that the best way to unstick your stuck-in-the-snow car is to go back and forth between reverse and forward as fast as possible. This is incorrect. Doing anything as fast as possible in the…
cwilcox | February 21, 2011Hey fellow bloggers and fans of blogs! I'm happy to report that Tom Paine's Ghost has announced the return of the Post with the Most!
The contest rewards a $100 cash prize to the most powerful blog post. Posts are judged on their clarity, originality, integration (must contain at least three forms of media - text, photos, art, video, etc) and, of course, power - the post's ability to motivate readers.
My longer term blog followers know that I won this honor last year for my post on the Gulf Oil Spill. Now it's time for you (or your favorite blog) to take the prize! You can nominate your own…
gregladen | February 20, 2011As Libya and Gaddafi move to a more prominent place in the news, I thought I'd point to a few posts on the topic. As an Africanist Archaeologist, I've got a special interest in Libya (though I've never worked there or visited). Haua Fteah is there. Haua Fteah is a cave facing north and overlooking the Mediterranean. It has sediments in it dating to over 120,000 years ago, which thus transcend the entire recent ice age, going all the way back to the last full interglacial. It was excavated by the guy who trained, at that site, two of the three archaeologists whom I had as advisors, Ofer…
pharyngula | February 20, 2011I'm in Minneapolis right now to give a talk at 2 at the Roseville library. My fellow Minnesotans all know we're being hit with a big snow storm -- the weather service is howling about blizzards and whiteouts. I'm beginning to suspect I'm not going to make it home today.
I have a Human Physiology class scheduled for 8am tomorrow morning. I'm hoping one or two of my students will see this message in a bottle and pass the word: I will be trying to get home today, but I'm not going to be stupid, and will give up rather than bulling on through hazardous conditions. If I do make it home, I will put…
gregladen | February 20, 2011The Skeptics Community is asking for people to help LaVerne. Bad things happened to her and her family. A few bucks from everybody would be nice. Please click here and make a small contribution.
pharyngula | February 19, 2011Talking all day. Tired. Talking more tomorrow: Atheist Talk radio with Minnesota Atheists at 9am Central time. Also giving another talk at 2pm. Then driving home in a snowstorm. Yay Minnesota.
mikethemadbiologist | February 19, 2011This edition goes out to the badass parrots. Links for you. Science:
Ordinal Regression: Data to Order
A virtuous intolerance
Budget 2012: NIH and CDC
Republicans are closing their eyes to climate science
Who dares enter the lair of the stingless bees?
The secrets of ant sleep revealed
Other:
Why We Should Raise Taxes on the Super-Rich and Lower Them on the Middle Class
Living history: Court ruling on whether some Hingham residents can use a beach hinges on colonial ordinance
'Bitten or crushed by other reptiles' (Bestest health statistics EVAH!)
New Research on Coerced Pregnancy Sheds…
gregladen | February 19, 2011Dinosaurs aren't the only source of fascination for paleontologists. Paleontology is a descriptive science that uses a variety of sources for information on how evolution has shaped life to what it currently currently consists of, and paleontologists look to the past through fossilized bones, mineralized records of the tracks and trails of botany, genetic records in modern DNA and geological records of the life that once populated the environments of the past.
Read more
tlambert | February 18, 2011Eugene Volokh is taken in by a story in the Daily Mail:
So reports the Daily Mail (UK) reports:
Residents in Surrey and Kent villages have been ordered by police to remove wire mesh from their windows as burglars could be injured....
Locals had reinforced their windows with wire mesh after a series of shed thefts but were told by community police officers that the wire was âdangerousâ and could lead to criminals claiming compensation if they âhurt themselvesâ....
something appalling is going on, either in English tort law, or in English police practices, or both.
Something appalling…
gregladen | February 18, 2011A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals is an online drawing tool that lets users do just one thing - trace a line. Each new user only sees the latest line drawn, and can therefore only trace this latest imperfect copy. As the line is reproduced over and over, it changes and evolves - kinks, trembling motions and errors are exaggerated through the process.*
Once an accidental feature shows up, subsequent tracers try to reproduce it like good little replicators. Eventually you get a dancing chihuahua.
A Sequence of Lines Traced by Five Hundred Individuals from…
gregladen | February 18, 2011Don't Miss Skeptically Speaking #99 Quacks and Scams, with Dr. Stephen Barrett of QuackWatch , James Randi and Jamie Williams.
Details here
gregladen | February 18, 2011Are you? If not, you can click here and be my Facebook friend. I don't need you to do that but it would be better if you did, just in case. It's good for you, it's good for me, really, you should do it. You need to do it. I don't really need it but maybe you do. You should, don't you think? Just click here.
Meanwhile,
Does Facebook Stress You Out?
The more Facebook friends people have , the more likely they are to feel stressed out by the site, according to a new study by Scottish researchers.
...
"The results threw up a number of paradoxes," said Dr Kathy Charles, who led the study…